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Volcanoes on MDI?

A friend once told me he read a seemingly serious book on the geology of Mount Desert Island that concluded that it was so unusual that MDI must in fact be the lost mythological island of Atlantis.

Which is pretty weird, right? Well, today a story posted at NBCNews.com showed up on my Facebook feed that to me seems almost as strange.

According to the story – which actually comes from the website LiveScience – a geoscientist at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Denver this past week revealed that, hundreds of millions of years ago, there were several ‘super-volcanoes’ in what is now Maine. Isle Au Haut, Cranberry Island and MDI all are mentioned in the piece as places where thick layers of ancient volcanic rock can be found.

“The coast is so serene and so beautiful and has such a terrible, violent past,” the geoscientist, Sheila Seaman of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told LiveScience staff writer Becky Oskin.

(Hat tips to Jeff Walls for posting the story in my FB feed and to Becky Oskin for her LiveScience story.)

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About Bill Trotter

A news reporter in coastal Maine for 20 years, Bill Trotter writes about how the Atlantic Ocean and the state's iconic coastline help to shape the lives of coastal Maine residents and visitors. He writes about fisheries, marine-related topics, eastern coastal Maine communities and more for the BDN. He lives in Ellsworth. Follow him on Twitter at @billtrotter.

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Bill Trotter

A news reporter in coastal Maine for 20 years, Bill Trotter writes about how the Atlantic Ocean and the state's iconic coastline help to shape the lives of coastal Maine residents and visitors. He writes about fisheries, marine-related topics, eastern coastal Maine communities and more for the BDN. He lives in Ellsworth. Follow him on Twitter at @billtrotter.